Due to his commitment with the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, Danny Boyle had a peculiar, but necessary, production schedule for his latest film, the thriller Trance. Completing production way back in 2011, it was known that we wouldn’t see the film, starring James McAvoy, until spring of 2013 and now we have a more concrete timeframe.

Coming from Pathe, a UK release date has been nailed down for March 27th, 2013 and although US distributors Fox Searchlight would only reveal the film is landing sometime next year stateside, we did previously hear a spring date was in the cards, so hopefully we get word soon on a domestic bow.

Based on Joe Ahearne‘s 2001 British thriller of the same name, the modestly-budgeted drama is being described in the “dark, sexy, hard-edged tone of Boyle films like Shallow Grave and Trainspotting.” With a cast including Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel, check out an official synopsis below as we await our first trailer for the project and see some additional photos from the set here.

Fine art auctioneer Simon (McAvoy), in league with a gang led by underworld boss Franck (Cassel), plots the audacious theft of a masterpiece by Goya from a major public auction. When Simon double-crosses the gang during the robbery, Franck retaliates violently and knocks him unconscious.

In the aftermath of the heist, Simon sticks stubbornly – and perhaps shrewdly – to his claim that the violent trauma has left him with no memory of where he stashed the artwork.

Unable to coerce the painting’s location from Simon, Franck and his associates reluctantly join forces with a charismatic hypnotherapist (Dawson) in a bid to get him to talk. But as they journey deeper into Simon’s jumbled psyche the boundaries between reality and hypnotic suggestion begin to blur and the stakes rise faster and far more dangerously than any of the players could have anticipated.